Help, crashing amd64 + 9800 pro system plus sound problems

[d64]

Hello, my friend is having problems with his new amd64 based computer with a radeon 9800 pro gpu. I will first list specs:

3R system 350W psu
Abit KV8-Pro mobo, Via K8T800-pro chipset
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 512kb
Twinmos 512mb 400mhz DDR
Connect 3D ATI 9800 Pro 128mb
Maxtor 200GB SATA

We installed the computer, ie, first xp with sp1 integrated, then via 4in1, nic drivers, then sp2, then directx, catalyst 4.10, sound drivers, zone alarm. Then before any further installs we tried Enemy Territory (q3a based) to see if everything would work. The game runs fine for a short while, then we get the "VPU recovery has reset your gr. accelerator as it was no longer responding" error.

After this we noticed another problem in windows: often the screen would just go black and reset was necessary. This started to happen so often a reinstall was necessary.

This second time we didn't attach network at all before zone alarm and avg were installed to eliminate the chance the problems would have been due to a virus. No luck, as soon as directx was installed, we started getting the black screens in windows again. We tried changing some agp settings in bios setup. Fast writes seemed to make no difference. Neither did the "AGP Master 1 WS Write/Read" settings. However changing the mode from 8x to 4x did help: the black screens ceased to pop up.

However, this did not help the ET vpu recovery error. We tried disabling the vpu recovery as some people had had success with this, after that ET just freezes instead of giving vpu error. We tried installing latest omega drivers, that did not help. We tried various settings in ET, and what finally did help was disabling trilinear filtering and using bilinear. After that we get no freezes. 3dmark went trough with no crashes as well.

Has anyone had a similar problem? Got any clues as to what we should try?

Also there is another problem with this computer: Sound. We are using the mobo-integrated 5.1 sound card, a realtek, and it gives out no sound whatsoever from any output. We have tried using speakers and headphones. While the driver software is detecting attached speakers, we hear about half a sec of sound playing, so I think this might be a problem with the driver. It detects the headphones correctly, but also detects powered speakers on a jack that in reality is empty. We get similar results with the wdm_a357.exe driver on the included cd, and wdm_a364.exe that we downloaded from realtek's pages, and with the Via supplied sound drivers from via arena. Any clues?

 

[johnjkr1]

Did you try it with a different power supply? For the errors you are getting, combined with the type/wattage of the power supply you have, that would be my first guess. Also, do you have the power plugged into the video card?

 

[d64]

We have not tried another psu as this is the only one he has, however, the store did say he would need a psu of at least 350W to make the system run properly, and they recommended this specific one.

UPDATE: Even with bilinear filtering, it seems ET does crash, it only takes very long to do that. With trilinear, it will probably crash within first minute, with bilinear, maybe in the first hour.

 

[eydolic]

That isn't a very good PSU for that system. Boycott. 350W of one brand can be 500W of another. Stick with FSP, Antec, Enermax, OCZ, and, the listt goes on a little more. I'm sure others in this forum would like to post their recommendations.

 

[mechBgon]

Yeah, make it a known, quality-brand PSU, and if your RAM is running at AUTO voltage, manually set it to 2.6-2.7 volts. PC3200 sometimes doesn't like 2.5 volts, which is what AUTO often means.

Oh, and good job on the awareness to security issues, btw

 

[d64]

These problems were solved. The various graphics problems and crashing were solved by keeping the agp mode at 4x and using older drivers than 4.10. The sound problems were due to the case having another set of plugs for headphones etc, which only should ahve been activated when something was plugged in to them, but for some reason were active all the time. After this panel was disconnected, sound started working.